Asking the questions

I often think that the kinds of audience participation that TV and radio producers try to shoehorn into their programmes are a bit of a waste of time. You know, the whole,“email or text your thoughts on X” thing. Sometimes, however, it actually gives you an opportunity to get the interviewer to ask a question on your behalf that you are itching to have answered.

Last night, Mr. Bsag and I watched a recording of The Culture Show from earlier in the week, which featured the wonderful Marcus du Sautoy talking to Mark Kermode about the depiction of scientists in films. We noticed that he had quite a nasty looking cut above his left eye, which had obviously been stitched and wondered how he had got it. My bet was falling off his bike (he works at Oxford, and that’s a pretty common cause of head lacerations there), while Mr. Bsag thought it might have been a football injury, knowing that Marcus plays football. There was an outside chance that it was an exciting duelling scar, inflicted when some ignorant cur opined that mathematics was‘pointless’ and Marcus was obliged to defend its honour.

Anyway, listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 this morning, we note that Marcus du Sautoy is a guest, talking about the glory of maths and promoting his history of mathematics series which is on Radio 4 next week. Without telling me, Mr. B slipped off to text the programme to ask about the aforementioned laceration. Towards the end of the programme, Fi Glover read out his question, attributing it to“someone” unfortunately, so no brief burst of fame for Mr. B. The answer was that he clashed heads with a 7 foot tall giant during a football match, and they both went away with stitches. Pity - I was quite enjoying the duel theory.